Understanding Anger

On December 7, 2015December 7, 2015 By Dr Craig ChildressIn Anger, The Emotion SystemLeave a comment

The emotion of anger has two facets:

Protective Facet: This function of anger is designed to protect us from predators. The predator represents a tremendous threat to us requiring a very violent response. Anger is potentially a very violent and savage emotion – too violent for the family and social relationships. In family and social relationships we need to shift our expression of anger over into the social-communicative function of anger.
Social Facet: The social-communicative facet of anger is to signal hurt, and it seeks empathy for our hurt. Within the social-communicative function of anger, the underlying social function is to create empathy: “You hurt me so I hurt you. You now feel the hurt that I feel. You now understand the hurt that I feel.” – the social-communicative function of anger is to establish a primitive form of empathy.

When the social-communicative facet of anger is not properly understood, then the danger becomes our indulging of the hurtful emotional violence of the protective facet of anger. We attack the other person with our anger to hurt them, and they defend themselves with their anger against our hurting them with our anger. The anger and hurt escalate.

Expressing Anger

Expressing anger in a social context is seldom, if ever, productive. When we communicate our anger it should always remain a well-modulated expression of annoyance, assertive power, and authoritaive voice rather than the direct venting of anger.

On a 1-10 scale, the social expression of anger should never rise above a 3.

The emotion of anger is designed to defend against the predator. It is a savage and violent emotion. It is too violent for social communication and it savages relationships. But anger makes us feel powerful and brings with it the strength of absolute certainty. In the heat of anger we tell ourselves, “I don’t care” as we abandon ourselves to the powerful feelings of venting our anger. When we indulge our anger we savage relationships. Venting anger is self-indulgent.

In social communication and within the family, it is NEVER okay to indulge the expression of anger. Not in the marital relationship, not in the parent-child relationship. Anger within the family and social group is a communicative signal of underlying hurt indicating that an empathic breach has occurred in the relationship. In the family and social group, anger is a communicative social signal not an emotion that is to be indulged and vented.

In the family and social group, anger should remain a well-modulated expression of annoyance and concern (a 1 to 3 on a ten-point scale). It can carry the assertive strength and power of the underlying brain state, but we need to refrain from indulging the brutality of the emotion.

The venting of anger above a 4 on a ten-point scale represents an emotional assault delivered against the other person. It is just like hitting the other person with our fist, but instead of using our physical fist we are using an emotional fist. It is NOT okay to hit someone physically, it is not okay to hit someone emotionally. Indulging the venting of anger is not okay.

Anger management will be addressed in a separate essay, but it benefits greatly from both parties understanding the socially communicative (rather than the protective-aggressive) function of the emotion. Within its socially communicative function, anger indicates that a breach has occurred in the empathic field of shared understanding, and the anger represents a very primitive attempt to restore empathy (“You hurt me so I’ll hurt you, so that you’ll now understand the hurt that I’m feeling”).

Hurt (sadness) is a social emotion, whereas anger and fear are power emotions (dominance and submission respectively). The social function of hurt and sadness is to draw nurture when we communicate our hurt and sadness into the social field. In socially managing our anger, we want to recognize that the signal function of anger indicates that we feel hurt by something the other person said or did, and we then quickly transfer the communication away from anger and over into our hurt (sadness) which will draw nurture and restore the empathic relationship that was breached by the other person’s seemingly insensitive comment or action.

From a social communication standpoint, we want to translate our anger into hurt and communicate the hurt. Our communication partner also wants to recognize the social communicative function of anger as signaling a breach in empathic understanding, which will allow our communication partner to respond in the most productive fashion – reflective listening and understanding.

Restoring Empathy: “Tell me more about that.”- “Oh, so when I did X you felt Y?” – “I’m sorry. What can I do to make it up to you?”

All of this represents an intent to understand the other person from the other person’s point of view. An intent to understand restores empathy and decreases the other person’s anger.

We want to avoid the unproductive and escalating responses of defending, minimizing, and counterattacking.

Defensive Responding: “It’s not my fault” – “You’re overreacting.” “What about what you did? You did xyz and that hurt MY feelings.”

Since anger is an attack, our natural response is to defend. We defend ourselves by trying to convince the other person that we don’t deserve the criticism, that there were reasons for our actions or that the angry response of the other person is excessive and out of proportion, or we counter-attack to equalize the criticism.

All of these responses maintain the empathic breach which created the other person’s anger. In all of these responses we are asking the other person to understand us. Meanwhile, the other person’s anger is signaling that they are hurt because of our empathic failure with them, and they want us to understand their hurt, to nurture their hurt and make it better (to understand and apologize).

The Levels of Anger

The emotion of anger has three levels. The top two levels are:

“You hurt me so I hurt you”

Anger is a defensive emotion. Anger arises when we are hurt (or are afraid we might be hurt), and anger is designed to prevent our being hurt by inflicting hurt on the threat.

The social function in communicating anger is to induce a submissive response in the other person that will generate an apology – the apology represents empathy for the hurt that was caused, which then created the angry-protective response.

Underneath the anger is hurt. In social-communicative anger there is an aggrieved party who is hurt – the person who is expressing the anger – and there is an offending party – the person who caused hurt and is therefore receiving the anger.

Aggrieved Party: The person who is expressing the anger. This person must quickly stop expressing anger and begin expressing the hurt.

Offending Party: This person had an “empathic failure” toward the aggrieved party that caused a hurt. Empathic failures are totally okay, common, and healthy social relationship sequences. They happen all the time. No big deal. When the other person goes “ouch” (becomes angry with us), we simply listen and understand our empathic failure, and we apologize to restore the empathic field. No big deal.

Beneath anger is hurt – “You hurt me – So I hurt you.”

So anytime we see anger we want to then look for – and respond to – the hurt that’s underneath.

The Core of Social Anger

The third level down is the most interesting – and the most productive. The reason you hurt me is because:

“I care about you, and you don’t care about me.”

At its fundamental level, anger emerges from an empathic failure, and the anger represents a very primitive effort at restoring empathy:

“I’ll hurt you so you’ll know how much you hurt me.”

That’s the structure of anger. You hurt me, so I hurt you. And the reason you hurt me is because I care about you but you don’t care about me.

Anger essentially arises from an empathic failure of the offending person for the feelings of the injured person. This empathic failure by the offending person breaches the bonded relationship with the injured person and creates the emotional injury. The injured person then responds with anger toward the offending person in retaliation for the hurt and in an effort to protect against being hurt by reestablishing the empathic bond – “You hurt me so I hurt you, and when you understand how much you hurt me you’ll stop… because you care about me and you don’t want to hurt me.”

When someone is angry with us, this is a social communication that we have done or said something that has hurt the other person’s feelings – we have had an empathic failure for the feelings and needs of the other person.

When we are angry at someone else, this is a communication from our emotional system that something the other person said or did hurt our feelings. They failed to be empathically attuned to what we were feeling and needing.

This is important to understand: Empathic failures that create relationship breaches and bursts of anger are TOTALLY NORMAL and entirely healthy relationship experiences. We cannot possibly remain empathically attuned to everyone all the time. We are separate individuals. Sometimes we say or do things that are not empathically attuned to the other person. This is okay.
The issue is not that we had an empathic failure toward this person. The issue is what do we do about it.

Inhibitory Networks

When we bring our emotions into the Language and Communication Systems, a set of inhibitory networks become active that go back to the Emotion System and quiet the intensity of the experienced emotion.

The goal of developmentally supportive parenting is to facilitate the child’s ability to bring emotional experience into language and communication, and to release and resolve the emotions through the healthy and bonded relationship with the parent.

When the child expresses anger, our initial response as parents is to seek to end the angry tantrum. We naturally view the child’s anger as a “problem behavior” to be suppressed.

However, when we simply try to suppress the child’s anger we are actually continuing the empathic breach that created the anger. Instead, a more productive response to the child’s anger is to “scaffold” the child’s ability to use emotions as a communicative signal. Rather than the explosive-expressive display of anger, we want the child to communicate. Children will not communicate if we don’t listen.

So our first response should be to listen – an intent to understand the child’s world from the child’s perspective. Something is hurting the child, that’s what is producing the anger. So what is hurting the child? This is the key question. Approach the child’s anger with this question in mind – what is hurting?

As we approach with this question, with this intent to understand the child’s world from the child’s perspective and to translate the child’s anger into hurt, we scaffold the development of the child’s brain networks for EXACTLY this same process of self-reflection, self-awareness, and understanding anger as an emotional signal of hurt.

And when we listen to the child’s anger AS IF the emotion has communicative value, then the child will make increasingly more sophisticated efforts to communicate with us. As the child brings his or her anger into the language and communication networks, the inhibitory networks of the Language and Communication System (and Executive Function System) activate to decrease the experience of anger, so that anger becomes annoyance. This is the goal of developmentally supportive parenting – to scaffold the development of these networks by “use-dependent” processes.

We build what we use.

Listening – Not Gratifying

We don’t necessarily have to gratify the child’s expressed needs by giving the child what the child wants. We are the parents, the adults, and the leadership function in the family is our responsibility. An important maturation domain for children is that they don’t always get what they want when they want it, and they must learn how to cope appropriately with the difficult emotions of frustration and disappointment.

However, even in teaching this important life lesson, we can at least be kind and empathetic to how difficult this life lesson is for the child – we can at least care about the child’s hurt and listen to the child. Perhaps there is some compromise that can be reached. Perhaps the child can have the desired object or activity at a future time, or perhaps the child can work to achieve the desired activity or object.

Are there times that we wanted something very much and have felt frustrated and disappointed that we couldn’t obtain the object of our desire? Of course. Are frustration and disappointment difficult and painful feelings? Yes, of course they are. So we can at least have empathy for how hard and painful it is for our children to learn these difficult life lessons and cope with the painful feelings of disappointment and frustration. We can listen to their pain, and provide nurture for their hurt, even as we set boundaries and limits on their desires and wants.

The child has a desire. We set a limit (we say, “No”). This creates the empathic failure on our part, we are failing to understand how much the child wants the object-of-desire. Our empathic failure in saying, “No” creates pain for the child which then becomes a display of anger.

In developmentally supportive parenting, instead of initially responding to the anger we instead respond to the child’s hurt and disappointment. In responding to the child’s hurt that is underneath the anger display, we are bringing to the child our intent to understand the child’s world from the child’s point of view, we are bringing empathy that restores the empathic bond and heals the cause of the anger. In this way we help the child communicate his or her hurt and disappointment rather than collapsing into an explosive-expressive display of anger.

Our goal is to bring the child’s expression of anger into the social field of appropriate social communication, and to help the child accurately recognize his or her hurt that is signaled by the anger.

Children will not communicate if we don’t listen.

Closure

Listening to the child does not necessarily mean giving the child what the child wants. We are the parents, the responsibility for leadership in the family is ours. The child must learn to adjust to and cope with limitations and restrictions in a socially appropriate way.

So after we respond with an appropriate period of listening and empathy – fostering the child’s communication – we can then bring the discussion to a close with an executive decision.

In some cases, when we listen to the child there may be some compromise we can reach. For example, instead of getting the child a candy snack at the store we may be able to work out a compromise through negotiation with the child to get the child a more appropriate and acceptable snack.

We build what we use.

Socially appropriate expression of desires, discussion, negotiation, and compromise are all positive pro-social communication skills.

In other cases, learning to cope appropriately with frustration and disappointment are also pro-social life skills.

Leadership within the family belongs to the parents. Closing discussion and making executive leadership decisions is the prerogative and responsibility of the parent.

What developmentally supportive parenting does is add a period of pro-social communication of emotion into the parent-child relationship in order to build in the child’s brain systems (through use-dependent processes) the interconnected networks between the Emotion System and the Language and Communication System.

The emotion of anger communicates hurt – due to an empathic failure. Developmentally supportive parenting responds to the hurt underneath the anger and in doing so fosters the child’s communication of this hurt and restores the empathic field that was breached and that caused the hurt.

Then – the parent moves on into closure of either compromise or an executive leadership decision.

Calm and Confident Authority

We don’t need to over-react to the child’s anger. The child is feeling overwhelmed by the pain of disappointment and frustration. Disorganized behavior is produced by a disorganized brain. A disorganized brain is painful.

We can help the child recover from this disorganized state by our remaining calm and confident in our authority and leadership as parents. The child is having a difficult time building the various brain networks needed to effectively regulate emotions. That’s okay, and that’s normal. The child’s anger simply represents a “protest behavior” produced by a disorganized brain state which is designed to elicit our involvement. The child is simply signaling a need for our supportive help. A developmentally supportive response will help the child build the needed underlying brain networks by scaffolding the use-dependent development of these brain networks.

The first and most primary connection is from emotions into and through the Language and Communication System. We scaffold the development of this connection by listening – by responding as if the child’s emotions have communicative value, which they do. Anger communicates hurt and an empathic breach in the relationship. Listen to the hurt, restore the empathic bond, and build this brain wiring between the Emotion System and the Language and Communication System.

Do this once, do this twice, do this 10,000 times, and the brain networks for the child’s pro-social communication of emotional experience rather than the explosive-expressive venting of emotions become stronger and more efficiently integrated. We build what we use.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857

PS. All of these principles work equally as well in the marital relationship. What I do all the time in marital therapy is to first translate the spousal anger into hurt, and then into the more fundamental level of a desire for bonding (that’s being frustrated by an empathic failure of some kind).

The Emotion System

On December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 By Dr Craig ChildressIn The Emotion System, The Six Primary Brain SystemsLeave a comment

The emotion system is comprised of four primary emotions:

Anger
Sad
Afraid
Happy

There are other secondary-specific emotions, such as surprise, disgust, and shame, but these secondary-specific emotions are more restricted in scope and have only limited impact on day-to-day parenting. For 99% of parenting we are concerned with the four primary emotions of anger, sad, afraid, and happy (pleasure).

Each of these primary emotions has three functions:

Signal Function:

Each emotion provides certain information about the world which can be used to guide our response to the situation.

Social Function:

Each emotion has a different impact on other people when we communicate the emotion into the social field.

Brain Function:

Each emotion has a differing impact on the organizational state of the brain. For example the emotion of anxiety-fear turns all of the brain systems ON, whereas the emotion of sadness turns all of the brain systems OFF.

Each of the primary emotions will be described more fully in separate essays for each primary emotion and each emotion-specific essay will examine the information provided by each emotion (its Signal Function), the social impact of each emotion (its Social Function), and how each emotion prepares the brain for a different type of task (its Brain Function). The current essay will provide a broad introductory overview of the emotion system.

Communication

Emotions are a “regulatory system.” Specific emotion emerge in response to the combined state-of-the-world and the needs-of-the-organism, and the emotion that emerges provides important functions for the organism in dealing with the current state-of-the-world and needs-of-the-organism.

For example, in response a perceived threat the emotion of anxiety-fear may activate (Signal Function) which prepares the organism with a heightened level of arousal (Brain Function) necessary for alert responding and possible flight or for a possible social display of submissiveness (Social Function) to turn off the threat posed by the other person.

If fleeing from the threat or presenting a submissive display to the threat is determined to be problematic (either from features of the current situation or from prior past experience in coping with threat), then the emotion of anger may emerge to prepare the organism for a fight response in order to defend against the perceived threat. The emergence of anger communicates that a threat exists that must be defended against (Signal Function), and may intimidate the threat into withdrawing (Social Function), and involves a brain response (Brain Function) of increasing the power throughout the physical system and turning ON all brain systems EXCEPT the two relationship systems of attachment bonding (I no longer care about you) and psychological connection (I no longer feel your pain), which are instead turned OFF by the emotion of anger (along with the two “weak” and vulnerable emotions of anxiety and sadness which are also turned off by the emotion of anger). Anger infuses the organism with power to defend against a perceived threat.

All of this will be explained in the individual emotion essays that examine each emotion separately.

The important point to understand is that emotions communicate the underlying functioning of the brain. Emotions are one of the primary sources for our understanding what is happening in the underlying brain systems of the child. Once we understand what each emotion is communicating about the underlying brain systems, and how to address the needs of these underlying brain systems to turn off the emotion, then we have our guide as to how to respond in a productive way to restore a relaxed, calm, and cooperative child (i.e., a happy-pleasure brain state).

Developmentally supportive parenting is about relationship and communication, not about behavior. Behavior is a communication, behavior is a symptom. The brain is the cause.

Emotional Inhibition

Another important thing to realize about the emotion system is that there are two main inhibitory networks within the brain that TURN OFF the intensity of the emotion. These inhibitory networks in the brain suppress the experienced intensity of the emotion, turning rage into annoyance, sorrow into sadness, and terror into anxiety.

The first and primary inhibitory network is through the Language and Communication networks of the brain. When we bring emotions into and through the language and communication system, an inhibitory network is activated from the communication networks back to the emotional system that suppresses the intensity of the emotions.

In the scientific literature, this is referred to as a change in the emotional quality from “catastrophic emotions” that are explosive and expressive, to “emotional signaling” in which the emotions now carry a communicative value. This process of transforming the emotional system from catastrophic emotional displays to emotional signaling will be described more fully in essays on the relationship system of psychological connection – called “intersubjectivity” in the scientific literature.

As just a little communication tip, if you want to reduce the intensity of someone else’s anger toward you all you need to do is bring their anger into their language and communication networks by listening to them. Encouraging the other person to tell us about their anger by our listening will bring their emotion, their anger, into and through their language and communication networks which will activate the inhibitory networks back to their emotional system and reduce the intensity of their emotion – of their anger. Anger in another person is reduced by our listening and empathy.

Too often, however, we respond to the other person’s anger (their attack, criticism, and threat) by defending and counter-arguing as to why the other person shouldn’t be angry with us. This stunts the other person’s ability to bring their emotion into their language and communication networks, leading the other person to try with even greater volume and insistence to communicate their anger to us.

Listening – bringing emotion into the language and communication networks – reduces the intensity of the other person’s emotions, whether that emotion is anger, or anxiety, or sadness.

The second inhibitory network is from the Executive Function System of thinking. When we bring the communication of emotions into and through the Executive Function System of language (“use your words”) a second inhibitory network from out of the Executive Function System also then acts to quiet and dampen the intensity of the emotional experience.

Emotions and thinking cross-inhibit each other. When we think we don’t feel, and when we feel we don’t think. I’m sure we are all familiar with the type of person who is incredibly rational and thinking oriented, and how this hyper-rational person’s emotions are over-controlled and suppressed. Then there is the other extreme of the highly emotional person whose thinking and rational judgement are impaired by his or her over-emotionality. What we want in healthy development is a balance of both thinking and feeling, so that we have access to both sets of information.

Emotions and Motivation

The emotion system also plays a role in one of the three motivational networks for active exploratory learning (the “Play” motivational network). The exploratory learning motivational network is guided by the principle of “seek pleasure – avoid pain” and is located in the sensory-motor and emotional networks of pain and pleasure. The active exploratory learning motivational system will be described separately in its own essay

Emotions and the Sensory-Motor System

The emotional system is embedded within the sensory-motor networks. Problems in sensory-motor regulation and integration can lead to problems in emotional regulation (a particular problem during early childhood). We can also create within ourselves low-levels of any particular emotion by just physically acting as if we had the emotion (this is how actors create their portrayals, they physically act as if they had an emotion, which generates a seed of the emotional experience, which the actor then expands and conveys into his or her performance).

One of the most useful emotions for parents to generate in this way is the emotion of happy-pleasure. This can easily be accomplished by simply smiling. I don’t care if you feel happy or not. Just smile anyway. The act of smiling itself will generate a low-level experience of the happy-pleasure emotion (a half-point on a 1-10 point scale).

Because the happy-pleasure emotion blends with all other emotions (which will be discussed in a separate essay), generating a low-level happy-pleasure emotion burst by simply smiling – even if you don’t feel like smiling – especially if you don’t feel like smiling – can soften and transform the experience of the other emotions.

For example, adding a low-level happy to the emotion of anxiety by simply smiling will transform anxiety into excitement (“woo-hoo, it’s kind of scary but it’s also fun”).

Adding a low-level happy to the emotion of anger is probably the most productive thing to do. Smiling when you’re angry – even though you don’t feel like smiling – will add a low-level happy-pleasure to the anger that relaxes the anger and reduces its intensity. The emotion of happy-pleasure is “no worries.” Adding the emotion of “no-worries” to anger can be extremely productive in almost every circumstance. Try it. Smile – even though you don’t feel like it – smile anyway.

The emotion of happy-pleasure is also the social bonding emotion (Social Function), so that when we smile we increase bonding with other people. This is especially valuable in parenting where the quality of the parent-child bond is so critical. Smile. A lot. More.

With the brain, we build what we use. If you start using the brain networks for generating low-level happy-pleasure by smiling – even if you don’t feel like it – you will be “canalizing” the channels in your brain for creating happy-pleasure. Do it once, do it twice, do it 10,000 times and you will have developed a positive happy-pleasure channel in your brain that will improve the quality of your life immeasurable. You will feel happier, and because the happy-pleasure emotion is the social bonding emotion (Social Function) people will like you better, you’ll have more friends, and you will be loved even more than you are now.

Smile. Practice it. A lot.

Understanding Emotions

In developmentally supportive parenting we will be using the child’s emotions as a window into the underlying functioning of the various brain systems of the child, and we will be using certain relationship-based and communication-based interventions to bring the child’s emotional expressions into the Language and Communication System.

The key to this will be understanding the function of each of the four primary emotions – anger, sadness, afraid, and happy. We well discuss each of these primary emotions in a separate essay for each emotion.